


I can't take the time to unlearn

by Spylace



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Origin Story, Past Brainwashing, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1410445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saint Petersburg, circa 1981. She wants to be a ballet dancer. Nijinsky is dead.</p><p>1981, she lives in an orphanage where all she can aspire to be is a hooker or a kept woman. Natasha is pretty enough for both. And she doesn’t mind when people touch her. She doesn’t mind most things.</p><p>The Red Room takes her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I can't take the time to unlearn

The first time she sees the Winter Soldier is when he puts a bullet through her.

Bye-bye bikini.

 

Saint Petersburg, circa 1981. She wants to be a ballet dancer. Nijinsky is dead.

1981, she lives in an orphanage where all she can aspire to be is a hooker or a kept woman. Natasha is pretty enough for both. And she doesn’t mind when people touch her. She doesn’t mind most things.

The Red Room takes her.

 

Natasha is taken and measured in every way she has been before. She tastes the rain in her mouth and the metal between her toenails. They feed her sweets and beat her for taking it. They promise to turn her into a masterpiece.

 

Her artist isn’t someone she expected. He is American, polite, new, blank and terrifying.

They dare her to lay a finger on him.

 

The first time she sees the Winter Soldier, he takes her breath away.

 

Her arms are next.

 

The stomach comes later—much later—and maybe not at all because when you’ve been in the Red Room you doubt. You doubt your perception of the world and everything in it. So the water in her mouth could be cum and she could still be back there trapped inside a metal coffin, at the orphanage staring at the arch of Ninjinsky’s foot.

 

The Winter Soldier is bright like a shiny new penny.

A red star is stamped across his deltoid—a symbol of hope, a promise. A symbol of brotherhood.

It is a sign no one is invincible.

No, not even her.

 

The soldier is gentle when he lays her down.

The first snow melts on the tip of her tongue.

More follow.

 

In 1987, she’s given a mission.

She sees him across the sidewalk only because he wants to be seen. Because she is young and has so much left to give. She hasn’t learned to take. No not yet.

 

She tells Steve the first time she saw him was on a mission.

 

She lies that the bullet went through her—

Bye-bye bikini.

 

Winter of 86’ and she is curious. About him, about his everything.

The soldier is obliging, indulgent even to her most tempestuous whims and she feels betrayed. Like a scalded cat, she slinks away. But she can’t deny the warmth that follows the cold clasp of his metal hand. Natasha touches her bruises admiringly, the way the purpled flesh stretches across her hips.

He doesn’t give her that scar. Not yet.

 

That comes much later.

 

She stands on one foot, poised like a ballerina.

The engineer is dead between them. The Winter Soldier has no qualms about killing but he does show mercy.

He cuts with his knife and spreads her like a spider caught under the glass.

Bye, bye bikini.

 

The star on the soldier’s shoulder is red.

Red is the color of her blood, her ledger, her hair and the place that promised to make her into a masterpiece.

She turns herself over the SHIELD.

The director comes to see her personally.

 

“You want orders? I can give you that. In exchange, all I want to hear from you is yes sir and I’ll see it done sir.”

 

Fury lies.

There is a reason the World Security Council don’t trust him—maybe there’s hope for them after all. But he hits close to the truth more often than not. She believes him when he says no such operative exists. Five years she wastes chasing a phantom asleep at her feet. There is a debt she owes and maybe the habit is too ingrained.

 

No. 1987 is not the first time she sees him but it is the first time she glimpses the man he could have been.

He crushes the tracker between his silver fingers after he digs it out and drops it next to her ear.

 

It’s 1987.

The Winter Soldier has her in his sights.

The Winter Soldier does not need to shoot through her, he is too skilled for that.

But he does show mercy.

 

She lies to Steve when she says she saw the Winter Soldier once when he was putting a bullet in her.

Bye-bye bikini.

**Author's Note:**

> +I don’t remember exactly which year they’re supposed to have met. Anyone?  
> ++Fury probably knew about the Winter Soldier, if not his identity then he’s existence. Though it’s kinda hard to believe how he missed it with Coulson being his right-hand man.


End file.
